Britain is 'teeming with Russian spies'
Russia is still running spying operations in Britain at Cold War levels, an official intelligence report revealed yesterday.
This is pushing MI5's counter-espionage abilities to the limit, according to its director-general Jonathan Evans.
-
He said the service is having to 'devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff' to track agents run from Moscow.
"Since the end of the Cold War we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK conducting covert action in this country," he is quoted as saying in the annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
"The Service is still expending resource to defend the UK against unreconstructed attempts by Russia and others to spy on us."
According to the ISC report published yesterday, MI5 has 3,382 staff and the number is expected to rise to more than 4,000 by 2011. It dedicates 3.5 per cent of its resources to counter-espionage work, mainly against Russia and China.
The report notes: "The murder of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006 led to a serious deterioration in diplomatic and political relations between Russia and the UK.
"In response to the Litvinenko murder, the Security Service increased its resource dedicated to Russia."
The level of heightened surveillance now being undertaken is censored in the published version of the report for security reasons.
However, Mr Evans did warn the committee that MI5 was hamstrung by a lack of resources.
Last night Russian expert Professor Richard Sakwa, of the University of Kent, warned that "both sides were hurtling towards a new Cold War".
He said: "It is appalling that 20 years after the end of the Cold War we are still in a position of utter mutual distrust, and this spying is a sign of it.
"I do not know what the Russians are trying to find out which would not be in the public domain."
The committee will also examine vetting procedures across all the intelligence services in the wake of the Max Mosley affair.
One of the women involved in the expose of the F1 motor racing boss was married to an MI5 officer who has since quit.
The revelation prompted an internal review of the way MI5 staff and their spouses are checked for security risks.
But in its annual report, the committee said it would be looking at the 'risks inherent in the vetting system' in more detail with regard to MI5, MI6 and the listening post GCHQ in Cheltenham.
Mr Evans told the ISC that checks are continuously carried out on spouses or partners of staff but they do not receive the same level of scrutiny as the officer.
Elsewhere in the report, the committee describes the scrapping of a secure IT system for sharing secret government intelligence as 'appalling'. Tens of millions of pounds had been spent on the Scope system before it was dropped by ministers.
The committee also expressed concern that job cuts at the Ministry of Defence risked damaging the Government's ability to analyse threats.
13 Comments
View all
by Steve, Cheltenham
Sunday, March 08 2009, 10:46PM
“Thanks Paul. That's good to know.”
by Steve, Cheltenham
Saturday, March 07 2009, 9:25PM
“"MI5 ... dedicates 3.5 per cent of its resources to counter-espionage work"
And the remaining 96.5% are doing what, exactly?”
by dave, moscow
Friday, March 06 2009, 10:43PM
“if i worked at GCHQ ide be in the pub every night impressing birds with all the juicy details of my top secret job”
by Ivan, The Bear
Friday, March 06 2009, 6:02PM
“The shoe is red, two handkerchiefs flying at 8.15.”
by Neil, Neil
Friday, March 06 2009, 4:52PM
“I expect they are reporting back on our litter strewn streets piling ever higher with rubbish, and the country's infrastructure slowly falling apart. This sounds very much like the civil servants of GCHQ attempting to justify their own existence. I suspect Quasi has it about right when he says that most GCHQ employees don't like to discuss their work because they are just "paper shufflers."”
by Kat, gloucester
Friday, March 06 2009, 12:08PM
“Quasi, Cheltenham, regardless of what they actually do, they are not allowed to say, as they have to sign a contract because of the Official Secrets Act. Any Central Government employee has to do this. I applied for a job at GCHQ many years ago, and I'm sure that the fact that I had a Ukranian surname was a factor in my being unsuccessful, even though I never really knew my father & had nothing to do with the country!”
by Inspector Gadget, Cheltenham
Friday, March 06 2009, 12:07PM
“Since the end of the Cold War "we have seen no decrease in the numbers of undeclared Russian intelligence officers in the UK conducting covert action in this country"
Wat?”
by Simple Simon, Goin' to the fair
Friday, March 06 2009, 11:26AM
“I quite like a nice pie.
I don't discriminate against them based on the origin of the pie, but I don't think it is right that we should import them from Russia, when we have perfectly good pie makers here already.
I prefer savory based pies to fruit, are these Russian ones any good?
Can a Cornish Pasty be classed as a pie or does it belong in a category of it's own?”
by Quedgeley Guy, Quedgeley
Friday, March 06 2009, 10:17AM
“What breathtaking hypocricy by MI5.
They need more money too expand their own espionage against the people of this country.
Isn't it this month that they start to log all emails and phonecalls that we make?
They will be paying Millions of pounds of our Tax Pounds to the ISP Companies to assist them to spy on us.”
by Quasi, Cheltenham
Friday, March 06 2009, 10:02AM
“Most people at GCHQ wont tell you what they do because they are embarrassed to say they are annonymous paper shufflers and want to keep an air of mystery and implied importance.”